


sweeter than honey or honeycomb

by a_big_apple



Series: from allegiance side stories [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Can you tell I love all the names of pieces of armor, F/F, Knight Pearl, Porn with Feelings, Queen Volleyball
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:21:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29596854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_big_apple/pseuds/a_big_apple
Summary: Queen Penelope (Volleyball) and her new wife and still best knight (Pearl) discuss the finer points of wearing armor.
Relationships: Pearl/Pink Diamond's Original Pearl | Volleyball
Series: from allegiance side stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2174388
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	sweeter than honey or honeycomb

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is pure indulgence on my part, set in a communal AU from The Reef server. You can read more stories in this AU [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789729)!
> 
> If you're just here for the spice, you can read this without any prior knowledge! All you need to know is that Volley is called Penelope, the troubles of her life have left her a little frail, and Pearl would definitely definitely die for her.
> 
> The title comes from [a love letter from one 12th century nun to another](https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/12/love-letters-12th-century-nuns-hauntingly-beautiful/).

Pearl isn’t sure if it’s a benefit or a drawback of married life that she is now deemed too important to be on perpetual rotation as her wife’s only guard. She can admit it’s simply not practical; she has learned to live with the worry that nags her when it’s someone _else’s_ turn to protect the life of her beloved. Still, she trained their new coterie of joint personal guards herself, refusing to loosen her vigilance until she was satisfied with their skill and trustworthiness. 

She can admit, sometimes, that it’s nice to simply take an evening walk on the grounds, unburdened of her armor, a faithful guard shadowing her without intruding on her moment of quiet. It’s the most relaxation she gets, outside of Penelope’s arms in the privacy of their chambers, and she’s come to treasure it.

She walks through the garden, and lets the day’s worries drift away for a little while; she breathes in the cooling air, the scent of the flowers, and thinks of her wife, perhaps already returned to their rooms, awaiting her. The running of a kingdom is a nonstop endeavor, but surely by now their advisors have let Penelope retreat for the night; they know, Pearl’s told them enough times, that she requires rest and can’t be pushed as hard as they’d like to.

With her love on her mind, she winds her roundabout way back toward their chambers. She nods to the guards at the end of the hall, and the guard at their door; her shadow takes up a station there as well. “I’m in for the night,” she tells them. “Is she—”

“Yes, Your Highness. Just after you left. All quiet since then.”

“Thank you.” Pearl pushes the heavy door open, and slips inside.

Their chambers are large, more opulent than Pearl might have chosen for herself; she enters into their private receiving room, the table cleared except for a fragrant apple pie, drizzled with honey and carefully gilded with rose petals. There’s always some decadent sweet or another on their receiving table—ostensibly to offer to guests, but truly to tempt Penelope into eating _something_. A modest sliver has been cut out of this one, and Pearl smiles to see it.

“Someone’s been nibbling at this pie, I see,” she calls as she crosses through the room, parting the curtained doorway to their bedchamber. “Will I taste its juices on your lips, My Lady?”

There’s a _shing_ of metal rubbing against metal, and a startled gasp. “Pearl!”

For a moment, Pearl can only stare. Her lady wife, her tender, delicate Penelope, is standing in front of their mirror, buckled clumsily into Pearl’s armor. Her face flushes as Pearl stares, her hands wringing together. “I...just wanted to try it,” she says, breathless and quiet. “I’ve watched you put it on so many times...I’m sorry.” She looks _caught_ , and Pearl’s heart pangs.

“Don’t be sorry,” she says, striding forward to take Penelope’s hands in hers. “It’s all right. What’s mine is yours, whenever you want it. But…” Penelope’s eye widens, fixed on her. “...you haven’t got it quite right, My Lady. You wouldn’t last five minutes in combat this way.” 

At last Penelope smiles in relief, her expression blooming like a flower. “ _Pearl_.”

“Let me help you,” Pearl offers, and takes her arm, adjusts the slipping vambraces, shifts the heavy pauldron on her shoulders, circles her with swift, sure touches. “Is this _my_ tunic you have under here?”

“And your breeches,” Penelope says, ducking her head with a deeper blush. “I couldn’t very well put armor on over my nightdress.”

“Clever.” The armor fits her, more or less; though Pearl is whipcord muscle and her wife bird-boned, they have the same long and narrow shape. “You look handsome in it,” Pearl murmurs, looking her up and down with unguarded admiration. Penelope flushes, but as she cautiously tests the weight, the range of motion, her bright face grows somber.

“Is it too heavy, my Lady?” Pearl asks, reaching out with worried hands, but Penelope takes them in her own. 

“No. Yes. Not as much as I expected, though too much for me to wear for long,” she admits. “But I...you have borne this weight for me daily, placing your body between mine and danger. My courageous knight.” She rubs her gloved thumb anxiously along the side of Pearl’s hand. “What did I do to deserve that, Pearl? What can I give you in return for that?”

Pearl pulls the gauntlet gently from her hand, leans down to kiss her fingers to hide the sudden swell of emotion that lodges in her throat. “Let me help you undress.”

Just as surely as she settled each piece into place, Pearl removes them and sets them aside; she can feel Penelope’s gaze on her like a beam of sunlight in a shadowed forest, but she keeps her own eyes on her task. On the slender column of Penelope’s throat revealed beneath the gorget; the slow rise and fall of her chest under Pearl’s hands as she lifts off pauldron and breastplate and plackart. The fine tremble of her arms as they are relieved of braces and couters; the narrow span of her hips beneath the fauld. Pearl reveals her piece by piece, smooth brown skin against the cream of Pearl’s tunic, the close fit of the sturdy breeches to her legs.

Then only the greaves are left, and Pearl sinks to one knee to unbuckle them. When at last she looks up, Penelope is regarding her with such undisguised emotion she can hardly bear it; instead she presses her face to her wife’s stomach. “I would carry ten times that weight into battle, if only to protect you,” she says, solemn as an oath. “A _hundred_ times.”

“Pearl,” Penelope breathes, and her fingers land moth-light on the crown of Pearl’s head. “Would you carry the weight of me to our bed? That is all I ask of you tonight.”

A breath; a slow smile. Pearl rises, calloused fingers slipping up beneath the borrowed tunic to rasp along the delicate skin of Penelope’s sides, and leans in to take her mouth in gentle answer. Penelope sways into her hands like a sapling in the breeze, and it’s barely an effort to sweep her up and bear her across the room to the mattress, lay her down gently and draw the curtains around their sanctuary. Penelope is flushed dark from her ears to her collarbone and farther, below the loosening neck of the tunic; her eye shines with adoration and heat in equal measures.

That eye flutters closed as Pearl climbs up too, leans over her to take her mouth again and then map that tempting blush down her throat, along one exposed shoulder. Beneath her, slowly, Penelope squirms.

“You endeavored to undress me,” she says, breathless as Pearl’s teeth graze the hinge of her jaw. “Would you leave the task half-done?”

Steady and slow, Pearl’s hand skims over Penelope’s hip, tugs at the laces of her borrowed breeches. “I would, My Lady,” she murmurs into a flushed ear. “Grant me your favor. Give me your scent on my clothes, the memory of your pleasure every time they touch my skin.” Unerringly her hand finds the flower hidden between Penelope’s thighs, dewy as an autumn morning, and cups it tenderly.

“ _Pearl_ —” A quavering sigh, the barest arch of the back are loud as a shout to Pearl, who has studied intensely the language of her wife’s body. Her fingers stroke, precise and unhurried; her other hand traces that stunning arch, the quick movement of her ribcage, the warmth of her bare breasts beneath the tunic. Penelope’s hands flutter and settle in her hair, pulling her in for another kiss, and another; reverently Pearl tastes each rising exhalation, feels each moan tremble against her lips as her fingers circle in sweet demand. 

In her hair, Penelope’s hands tighten and tug. “My love,” she pleads. Their knees knock together as her legs seek purchase in the sheets, and her brows furrow, reaching. Pearl lays a kiss between them, then on the bridge of her nose.

“Your favor, My Lady,” she asks, dropping her words into the moment between them like rocks into water. “Give it to me.”

Penelope whimpers as though pained, eye squeezed shut, and shudders through her pleasure. As she soars Pearl paints her face with kisses; when she begins to sink back down to Earth, Pearl leans back on her knees to see her handiwork, her lover stunned and beautiful, limbs going lax in Pearl’s own garments. The hot coal in her stomach glows hotter, and she strokes her palms along Penelope’s thighs just to be in motion again.

Penelope’s eye flutters open, half-lidded, crinkles with a smile when it finds her. “You look pleased with yourself.”

“Only admiring your radiance,” Pearl tells her with a grin, half a tease and half sincere.

Penelope hums, and raises her arms above her head. “A task better done if you’d undress me after all.”

“I bow to your wisdom.” With gentle hands Pearl slides the tunic off and tosses it aside, pulls back to tackle the breeches, sighs with adoration at the swath of tawny skin revealed. 

“Undress yourself as well,” Penelope tells her, a tantalizing hint of command in it even as she shifts under Pearl’s gaze. “It’s cruel of you to deny me this long.”

Pearl lays a hand over her own heart. “I could deny you nothing.” Languidly, testing her wife’s patience, Pearl pulls her own tunic off over her head, wriggles out of her breeches and underthings, stretches with all the performative laziness of a cat in a sunbeam.

Gratifyingly, Penelope laughs. “You wicked thing. Come here,” she says, reaching out her hands, laying them on Pearl’s hips as she straddles her again. “I fear you’ve worn me out, and now you must bring your flower to me.”

She tugs at Pearl’s hips with gentle insistence, and the banked fire in Pearl’s gut roars to life as she follows; Penelope urges her still closer, nestling back into the pillows, her thumbs tracing the tendons of Pearl’s inner thighs. “A rose in full bloom,” her wife murmurs, hungry, intent. She pulls Pearl down the final inches to her mouth, and the shocking touch of her tongue where Pearl so _aches_ for it slices through her sharp as a sword.

“My Lady,” she chokes out, and finds purchase for her hands on the headboard, stilling her hips by strength of will alone. 

Penelope hums against her, making Pearl jolt. “I’ll never tire of the taste of you,” she sighs, and her eye sizzles along the skin of Pearl’s tensed, scarred abdomen, her meager breasts, her straining arms making a canopy as she curls into her pleasure. Moments stretch to hours and shrink back again with each flicker of Penelope’s tongue, as Pearl sings out her delight at humiliating, involuntary volume; then there is no room in her for embarrassment or shame, burned away by her rising passion as her wife’s fingers dip carefully, shallowly inside her.

“ _Poppy_ ,” she sobs, beginning to unravel; Penelope’s mouth encloses her in searing heat, tongue rolling, pressing, pulsing—

“I love you,” Pearl gasps as she’s overtaken, “I love you, I love you.” Penelope moans against her and doesn’t let up, insistent, _devouring_ , until Pearl can bear no more and fumbles back to sit straddled across her wife’s thighs; panting, she lets Penelope draw her in close for a kiss and shivers at her own taste in her wife’s heated mouth.

“I love you,” Penelope tells her, serious between smeared kisses, and Pearl sighs as she melts into her arms. Tenderly Penelope strokes her fingers through Pearl’s mussed hair, tickles the tiny bits that curl at the back of her neck, as Pearl breathes through the glow of emotion in her chest. Rendered soft by affection, she tucks her face into Penelope’s throat, plants a lazy constellation of kisses there. The quiet extends, syrupy and warm. Then— “That pie was very good,” her wife comments into the silence, almost wistfully. 

Pearl snorts a laugh before she can stop herself, grinning into Penelope’s sharp collarbone. “Have all our exertions roused your appetite, My Lady?”

Penelope giggles. “One hunger goes hand in hand with the other, my love. Let me up—I’ll fetch it, we can eat it here in bed.”

Pearl rolls to the side obediently, though she pulls a doubtful face. “We’ll make a mess of ourselves that way.”

Penelope swings her legs out of the bed, undeterred, but leans back to trail her fingers down Pearl’s bare chest with a sideways smile. “Oh, I have more plans to make a mess of you tonight than just an apple pie.”

“Then let it be as you say, My Lady,” Pearl acquiesces, arching a fraction into her touch; Penelope’s smile widens and she slips away through the bedcurtains, giving a flash of bare backside that stokes the fire in Pearl’s belly again. 

What on Earth was she thinking, earlier? Letting down her guard, even just a little, could never be a drawback—not when it allows her nights like this. 

The curtains part again and Penelope sets the tart tray and a knife on the bed. Though it’s tempting to watch her wife climb naked back onto their mattress, Pearl takes the opportunity to cut a slice, holding it out to Penelope on her hand. With a wicked look and a fierce blush, Penelope cups Pearl’s hand with hers, thumb against the pulse point of her pale wrist, and takes a delicate bite. She hums around her mouthful, honey and juice glistening on her lips. “Delicious. Taste it, my love.”

“I intend to,” Pearl murmurs, leaning across the tray, and kisses her.


End file.
